Wrong Way To Treat The Elderly

July 11, 1987

EVERY weekday Donna Rhodes got up at 7 a.m., put on her brightest dress and a smile that could cheer the dead, put her guitar onto the back seat of her car and drove to a nursing home. There, under the auspices of Orange County Schools Community Instructional Services, (CIS), she brought music, current events and motivation into the lives of institutionalized old people. Her tools were songs, color, attention and love.

Rhodes is out of work. So is Katherine Nicklin, another CIS miracle worker, superb flute player, patient teacher and friend to the old. So are many others.

That funding for the CIS was not renewed this year came as a surprise to many legislators who killed it. It came as a shock to CIS administrators statewide, who had been advised of a funding increase for 1987-88. But there were reports of a few cases of financial mishandling at some local levels of this statewide program. For one legislator, that was enough to condemn the entire structure. CIS funding was killed in committee.

I have gone with Rhodes from time to time on her rounds. I've played a little guitar and keyboard for the folks at Park Lake Care Center and Winter Park Care Center. I've seen their faces light up, watched their old hands slapping out a rhythm. I've seen them get excited about life and watched them hug Rhodes with sincerity. I've watched the fog lift a little from some of the Alzheimer's patients, and seen them return for a few moments to the joy and awareness that is the birthright of all.

One philosopher said you can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its old people. What, then, have we said about ourselves? We do well to remember that if we live long enough, we all grow old. How will we wish to be treated? We will deal soon enough with the precedents that we allow to be set today.

Readers could contact their legislators and demand that funding for this humane and worthwhile service be restored. Our elderly and infirm need all the color and song they can get.